Women of Distinction
81p Stamp - Barbara Castle
A sheet of fifty 81p stamps featuring Barbara Castle who championed equal pay for women, Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008
72p Stamp - Claudia Jones
A sheet of fifty 72p stamps featuring Claudia Jones who worked tirelessly to wipe out discrimination, Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008
56p Stamp - Eleanor Rathbone
The 56p Eleanor Rathbone stamp is available in a sheet of 50. Eleanor Rathbone, who fought to pay the family allowance to women. Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008.
50p Stamp - Marie Stopes
A sheet of fifty 50p stamps featuring Marie Stopes. Marie Stopes took the lead on family planning. Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008.
48p Stamp - Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
The 48p Elizabeth Garrett Anderson stamp is available in a sheet of 50. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was our first female doctor and became Britain’s first female Mayor in her hometown Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008.
1st Class Stamp
A sheet of 50 1st Class stamps featuring Millicent Garrett Fawcett an early campaigner for votes for women. Available from Tuesday 14th October 2008
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Each of the six women featured in this stunning set of Special Stamps took on the establishment and won. Some, such as Marie Stopes who took the lead on family planning and Barbara Castle, who championed equal pay for women, are household names. Others perhaps are less familiar, but equally worthy of inclusion.
In 1908 Elizabeth Garret Anderson became the first woman to be elected mayor in England, but her passion lay not just in politics, as she also became the first woman to qualify as a doctor, founding the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital for Women.
Also appearing in this issue is Garrett Anderson’s sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a tireless campaigner for women’s rights, who as President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was instrumental in securing the right to vote.
Eleanor Rathbone campaigned for Family Allowances and was elected as an MP in 1929. A year before her death in 1946 she saw them introduced.
Opening her first clinic in 1921, Marie Stopes pioneered modern methods of birth control and her work continues in 38 countries around the world through the Marie Stopes International charity.
Claudia Jones campaigned for the rights of the black community in the UK and her lasting legacy is undoubtedly the Notting Hill Carnival, which she helped launch in 1959.
First elected to Parliament in 1945, the Labour MP Barbara Castle spent a lifetime fighting for social causes, key among them was the 1970 Equal Pay Act which she oversaw.
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